This invention is in the field of keyboards. In particular, a first embodiment of the present invention relates to keyboards for portable personal computers.
Alphanumeric keyboards and their use as data input devices to digital computers are known. Although many different types of keyboards are known, including the well-known "QWERTY" keyboard, a standard size keyboard has evolved. The necessity for a standard keyboard size, including a standard size for the individual keys, as well as for the overall size and arrangement of the keys, should be obvious, as it allows an individual to use any keyboard with roughly equal facility.
Although standard size keyboards are adequate for computers used in a single fixed location, they have the obvious drawback of their size when incorporated into the increasingly ubiquitous portable personal computer. In such computers, the electronics which comprise the operative circuitry does not determine the final size of the portable computer. Rather, the input device, such as the keyboard, and the output device, typically a liquid crystal display ("LCD"), dictate the final size.
The keyboard in particular presents a difficult design problem. Obviously, the individual keys used in the typical keyboard for a non-portable computer could be reduced in size. However, the limit beyond which shrinking the individual keys creates increasing user difficulties in operating the keyboard is rapidly reached. Most work on shrinking keyboard size has concentrated on reducing the thickness of the keyboard, not on reducing its length or width.
A keyboard or reduced length and/or width, which nonetheless retains the operating convenience inherent in a standard, full-size keyboard, would permit further reductions in the size of portable computers. To date, no such keyboard is known.